CHECK THEIR MATH

I’m slow in getting to it -- “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” being far more important -- but the official word on the U.S. deficit came out this week: At $374 billion for the fiscal year that’s just passed, White House estimates in July were off by $81 billion.

Thus the White House confirms it cannot do math; the averaged guess of bond-trading firms surveyed by Bloomberg News at the time was off by only $58 billion, and they had less data. Or, if the surprise $26 billion boost of the past few months of tax revenue is factored in, the White House is off by $55 billion, while the traders were off by $32 billion.

Good going, White House. But we know you’re doing the best you can -- that you have problems with numbers, such as how much a war will cost or how much malpractice reform will help ease the staggering cost of health care premiums in the United States. (The answers, respectively, are “a lot” and “not much.”)

And it must be respected that the White House Office of Management and Budget concedes that not only is the $374 billion double what it was in the previous fiscal year, but that the deficit in the next fiscal year will be more than $500 billion.

(Looking at this year for guidance, that indicates a deficit for fiscal year 2004 of somewhere around $419 billion.)

It defends the deficits by noting their size compared with gross domestic product, of which $374 billion is only 3.5 percent.

But the office can’t keep its figures straight, probably because it benefits from the confusion. A look at the tables posted on its Web site yesterday shows that by its own estimates, the $500 billion deficit it expects for fiscal year 2004 will be 4.2 percent of gross domestic product -- but that it matches the percentage of deficit for fiscal year 2003.

It doesn’t.

While two plus two may equal five, 3.5 percent does not equal 4.2 percent.

The punchline is that the chart showing this is labeled “As a percentage of GDP, the budget deficit is expected to be cut by more than half by 2006.”

More than half! You can trust that!